Western Short StoryShoot and PrayTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

In
a night of sporadic shooting and civil madness, it was apparent, a
most innocent person, Lon Ashbury, was killed by a stray bullet, and
his family wanted revenge on the shooter, supposedly a local young
man by the name of Ambling Porter. The arrest had been made,
witnesses named and summoned, and the judge had been sat before the
principles, in the Red Eye Saloon. One of the Ashburys had said, “It
sure looked like Ambling Porter who shot Lon, and he was standing
there between the bank and the barber shop with a gun in his hand.”

Defendant
Ambling Porter sat on a bench in front of the judge. He was a young
man, perhaps 30 years old, sporting a grand mustache with pointed
ends and waiting to see who was going to be the next witness. His
Stetson sat on one knee and he wore a gun belt with an empty holster,
and a nicely pressed pale blue shirt his wife had brought to the jail
that morning.

Porter
was married to the prettiest girl in town, had three children less
than five years of age, and owned, with his wife Lisa, a decent
spread out of town and along the river that was once owned by Lisa’s
father. Some people said Porter hadn’t earned it as other men had
earned their spreads, with years of work on a place, that he had put
his eyes on Lisa when she was real young just to get on the inside of
her favors.

Porter
knew some men would lie to gain any edge in romance and property.

Ridley
Grange in high Iowa was caught up in a new court case, with Judge
Abner Hurdle hearing the case again.

Suddenly,
in the midst of a minor testimony, one of the townsfolk, yelling as
loud as he could, came rushing into the Red Eye Saloon in the middle
of the court session, roughly pushing a man ahead of him. It was the
town drunk he pushed, a bedraggled, grungy-looking 40 year older who
slept where he fell down at night. The noise from the pair was
tumultuous, one yelling and one blubbering about innocence and awful
red dogs, big as horses, chasing him and having big mustaches that
hung to the ground.

“What’s
goin’ on there?” said Judge Hurdle, hitting the table top with
the butt of his pistol. His straw hat sat on his round face like the
pale blossom on a withering prairie flower, his cheeks showed
themselves puffy and red obviously from “the drink,” and an empty
glass lie closer to his hand than his carry-on gavel. The
ivory-looking gavel, made from pieces of a big horn sheep’s horn,
hardly carried any of the original “bang” in it.

The
townsman yelled out again, “This old floater Harry was goin’
through the saddlebag on a horse outside, and he’s never owned a
horse in his livin’ days and he’s about as drunk as he’s gonna
get today.”

The
pusher looked around at those in the crowded courtroom/saloon, the
drinking service for them halted for the time being at the judge’s
direction, and rolled his eyeballs asserting that the drunk was
really, really drunk this time. A newcomer could rightfully assume
that the man had been seen drunk before, might likely be a stick-out,
a “knowner” as they might call it in Ridley Grange.

The
judge said, “Whose horse was he trying to steal?” and the pusher
said, “It was that pinto Jed Corcoran rides. Calls him Patchy.”
He pointed to a table in the other far corner of the Red Eye Saloon.

Hurdle
looked into the corner where Corcoran was sitting and said, “Want
me to give him 10 days for trying to steal your horse, Jed?”

“Nah,”
he answered,” let him be, harmless old drunk just blowin’ off too
much liquor.”

The
judge nodded and asked, “You see any of the shooting, Jed?”

“Well,
I was over by the livery and all I can say is it looked like Amblin’,
only like some folks have said, looked like but not sure, but looked
like. You know, the mustache and the hat he wears. Simple stuff like
that.” He looked off as if he was totally uninterested in any of
the court’s proceedings, shrugging his shoulders, sticking his
tongue out to say he’d rather be drinking.

Other
onlookers nodded in agreement; of course, this was really a saloon
and had only been taken over temporarily for a civil need.

The
judge looked away and said to the sheriff who was pressing the
charges against Porter, “Don’t leave this session, Sheriff. You
can lock up Harry boy later. For now, give him another drink and let
him stew.”

There
was expectant laughter in the room at the judge’s poke at Harry the
drunk, for the judge had leveled one of his comic looks at the
gathering. He was not considered a joke in the courtroom, though he
was appreciated as a joker. The difference with him could be a thin
line or a mighty wide line depending on all kinds of circumstances,
like who was dead, who was alive, who was male and who was female,
who was young and who was so old his last breath would be quickly
forgotten. Such circumstances became building blocks in cases coming
in front of the judge, whether they were in presentation or connived
by him for such use.

The
judge had enemies and advocates on each side of the line of
difference.

And
ensuing quickly thereafter, as expected by many in the room, the
judge added his first qualification of orders of the day; “But
that’s the only drink to be poured, you hear me, Charlie.” And
then he added for the bartender, after a pause of measurement of a
dry-throat, his second qualification, “But you might as well pour
one for me, Charlie, and me alone as presiding officer here, while
you’re at it.”

The
courtroom tittered with laughter, and the sheriff took two drinks
from the bartender, sat one in front of the drunk at a table in one
corner and one in front of Judge Abner Hurdle, no newcomer to court
in Ridley Grange in the Red Eye Saloon, and surely no newcomer to
“the drink,” as one might say of him.

Harry
the drunk hollered again about other wild images and darkness deep as
Hell and then a few unintelligible words, and the sheriff said,
“Drink up and shut up or I’ll see you don’t get another drink
for 30 days. How’ll that sit with you, Harry, when your tongue is
burning with the fire of sobriety?”

The
judge banged the gun butt again and ordered the sheriff to bring up
his next witness, saying, “Gus, best bring him up now and get this
thing goin’ again ‘cause I ain’t about to spend all day on what
might be a sure thing verdict. “

All
around the saloon interested parties observing the court proceedings
nodded at each other, saying they had expected nothing different from
Judge Hurdle, and one among them was heard to whisper, “Man’d
jump three tables or a dozen kegs just to get to the bar on time. Too
bad he knows so much about lawyering and judging.” And anyone would
accept a reply that would have said, “Too bad he knows anythin’
at all about courts and its doin’s.”

Sheriff
Gus Almond pointed at one man in the front row and said, “Get up
here, Asa, and swear the truth is all that comes out of your mouth.”

Asa
Worthly, 65 if a day, said, “I ain’t sayin’ anythin’ ain’t
the truth all the way now that I spent some time thinkin’ all
thin‘s over again.”

Leaning
over, the judge said, ”Asa, are you saying you’re changing what
you said earlier, that it was Ambling Porter who did the shooting?”

“What
I’m sayin’, Judge, is the truth of the matter an’ what Gus
asked me to say just now. I can’t say it was Amblin’ for sure,
but this I can say, the shooter who looked like Amblin’ didn’t do
no prayin’ at the time an’ we all know Amblin’ never shoots
without prayin’ a little after hopin’ he didn’t kill nobody.
All folks I know know that about him.”

After
Worthly expressed qualifications about what he’d said earlier,
Porter realized it was the first mark in his favor.

The
town drunk made some more noise and the judge said, “Make him keep
quiet, Gus, or stick your bandana in his mouth.”

“He
waren’t there at the livery,” Harry the drunk said, the first
intelligible words he had uttered since he had been pushed into the
saloon. Then he lapsed into additional histrionics and talk of new
wild images tossed up from his mind.

No
one in the saloon/courtroom was paying any attention to the drunk at
this point, tired of a man who had already embarrassed himself beyond
hope.

But
lawyering and judging had come with other graces to Judge Hurdle, the
drink not discounted, and he never discarded what involuntary
information came to him about a case he was hearing, regardless of
the source.

The
“shoot and pray” bit sat with him like an aftertaste, and the
curiosity it carried made him scan the room, spot a likely and
innocent but curious court watcher and say, “You, the gent on the
end of the row with the gray Stetson and the red band on it, stand up
so I can ask you some questions.”

The
man stood up and said, “I don’t know nothin’ about this
shootin’, Judge ‘cause I wasn’t no ways near it.”

“No,
don’t worry about that part. Do you know anything about this shoot
and pray thing with Mr. Porter here.”

The
judge pointed to Porter who twisted his head in a questioning motion,
as if he was curious and anxious at the same time to hear the
response.

“Oh,
yes, sir, Judge. I seen some of it before where Amblin’ scared Hell
out of someone he shoots at and misses like it’s on purpose and
then blesses himself like them do that believes in that, only he does
it with his left hand while his right hand I still holdin’ onto his
gun, kinda just in case.”

“You
really stand there and tell me you seen that?” the judge said.

“Not
once, Judge, but twice, and both times I was workin’ a herd for him
and the Rochester gang once and the Pinto Busters another time tried
to rustle our cattle an’ Amblin’ plumb scared the bejeebers outta
a couple of them and blessed himself or his shots with his left hand
like them do as I said, and he run them off ‘cause one of them was
mostly the boss rustler. Yep, both times, like he knowed who the boss
was.”

“You’d
work for him again, on another drive, with Porter?”

“Oh,
sure, Judge. You can bet your last drink on that.”

The
entire Red Eye Saloon/courtroom suddenly blossomed into one great big
but silent smile, and Judge Abner Hurdle was part of that smile when
he excused the cowpoke speaker, saying, “You made a good point
there. You can sit down.”

He
stared a while at Porter and said, “You hold with what the last
witness said, Ambling?”

Porter
did not mince any words and did not think long on the question, and
answered straight off, “I am as bounden to it as I am to my
family.” He said no more.

“Who
else you got, Gus,” the judge said as he looked over his shoulder
at the barkeep. In all the noise the glass at his elbow had been
emptied. The barkeep nodded.

The
sheriff, looking around the saloon, said, “Well, we had two
witnesses that said it looked like Porter there, but with some
doubts. We might not get a conviction with what we heard, but we
still got a dead man, and we don’t know who did it or why.”

Harry
the town drunk was at it again, yelling both intelligible and
unintelligible words as he struggled to stand up at his table. “He
waren’t at the livery, no mustache on them either.”

“Damned
you, Harry,” the sheriff said as he whipped his bandana from his
back pocket, “I’m goin’ to stuff your mouth.” He started
after the drunk when the judge halted him in his tracks.

“Hold
on there, Gus. Let’s see what he was talking about. See if we can
make sense of any of it.”

The
sheriff held the drunk up at the side of the table. “The judge
wants to ask you some questions, Harry. If you got something to say,
get ready or get locked up for 30 days.”

Those
words came like the Sword of Doom down on the drunk, and the judge,
feeling a sense of true justice about to break out in the saloon,
said, “”Who wasn’t at the livery, Harry? Can you remember who
wasn’t at the livery? Can you tell us that? It’s important.”

Harry
the drunk pointed into the other corner of the saloon, “It was him
who waren’t at the livery.” He was pointing at Jed Corcoran.

“When
was he not at the livery?” the judge asked.

“When
he said he was, afore. When he said it afore.”

Judge
Abner Hurdle could remember all he heard so far in the case and he
looked at Corcoran and said, “You said before you were near the
livery when the shot was fired. Here’s a man says you weren’t.
What do we do with this now, Jed?”

Corcoran
was up on his feet, waving and pointing his hand at the drunk, and
yelling, “He’s a damned drunk, that’s all he is. You mean to
tell me you’re gonna believe anythin’ he says all the time he’s
been talkin’ about dogs and horses and Hell itself. Man’s into
his liquor deep as he can get. He don’t deserve no answerin’,
least of all from me.”

“Every
man gets his chance in my court,” the judge said. “He’s having
his right now. Man knows he’s probably going to get locked up for
disturbing the due process here all the time, but he gets his chance
in my court.”

“He’s
nothin’ but a damned drunk,” Corcoran yelled, and turned as if he
was going to walk out of the saloon.

The
judge said, slow and easy so he wouldn’t have any further problems,
“Please make sure, Gus, that nobody leaves this court until I’m
through.”

He
turned back to Corcoran and said, “Sit back down, Jed, and tell the
court why you lied about where you were when the shooting took
place.” It was a judicial order that everybody in the salon fully
understood, even from a known tippler like the judge. The
understanding brought with it a profound silence, and the judge
measured that silence, sensing something in it, awareness, a shift of
a sort.

Corcoran
said, “I’m damned sorry, Judge, but it can’t be that you’d
believe a drunk and what he says he saw and me standing here as cold
sober as waitin’ can make a man who’s thirstin’ for the first
drink of the day.”

It
was a slippery edge at an opening and the judge recognized its
intent.

“I
ain’t begrudging you anything, Jed, and surely not your chance to
speak in your behalf, but I’m finding it troublesome to swallow a
chunk of it right now.”

The
drunk put in his last bit when he yelled out, “‘At’s why I was
at the pinto. Look in the saddlebag.” He sprawled across the table
and two men leaped up to sit him in his chair.

Corcoran
made an attempt to leave the room and two other men grabbed him as
the sheriff said, “Hold him there. Take his gun. Sit him down,”
He looked at the judge and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Ambling
Porter was sensing a new aura in the room, and a swing of odds into
his favor. His prayers were always said in good faith, in true
intent, in the hope that he’d never kill a man in exchange for
something not really worth it. He saw the sheriff coming back into
the Red Eye Saloon holding unidentified objects under his arm.

The
sheriff went straight to the judge and laid the objects down in front
of him. One was a hat just like the one that had sat on Porter’s
knee for the whole trial so far, and the other was a fake mustache,
with tapered ends like the spikes on a longhorn bull, like the
mustache Ambling Porter still had in place across the width of his
face.

Judge
Abner Hurdle, still with his soft voice, said, “All charges against
Ambling Porter are dismissed at this time and if there’s any more
killing in this town, I’ll shut down the Red Eye Saloon for a whole
month of Sundays and I’ll be holding court not just for killing but
for broken laws of littering the road or swearing in front of ladies
or not going to church of a Sunday, you can bet your last drink on
that.”

He
said to the sheriff, “Gus, you lock up that scoundrel Corcoran
pronto. Court will sit again tomorrow to hear charges against him.”

Then
he looked around, saw all the men in the saloon leaning forward, and
said, again slowly and with reserve, “The bar is now open.”

He
saw Ambling Porter meet his pretty wife at the door of the saloon,
and thought at the moment that all was right with the career he had
chosen. He wondered how far he could carry this tale of shoot and
pray, and if any listeners would believe him.